THE HEART AS WIDE AS THE WORLD

The other day, Rev. James R Willems gave me a book to read, Metaphysical Horror by brilliant Polish philiosopher, historian, theologian, political scientist, and literary critic Leszek Kolakowski. His is a rare voice speaking to the sheer possibility of our spiritual yearnings and religious beliefs in a world clearly stuck a philosophical cul-de-sac for a century now. Kolokowski confronts the impasse with a jaundiced eye and a lucid mind. Like a Zen sage, he asks probing questions that raise great doubt, necessary for there to be any great faith.

The world is more than material. In affirming the transformative creativity of the nonmaterial (call-it-what-you-will: God, Great Spirit, Mind, Soul, Nature) — he makes me see too the inevitabilikty of fundamentalist response, within the quest for meaning in our lives today.

I take that to heart as I re-read this, selected as Quote of the Week, by Religion News Service: "The freeing moment will come when you decide to take a bullet for this movement. Then you can't be bullied and intimidated into silence anymore. "

— Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, who launched the new “Operation Rescue Insurrecta Nex” in Crystal City, Va., and called on fellow activists to continue their cause despite the bad publicity over the slaying of an abortion doctor.

(¿How many negations of negation can you count in that statement, and the media's summary thereof? Murder is reduced to (negative) publicity. Having sanctioned the taking a life in the name of the  sanctity of life, a fearless fundamentlist is prepared to face martyrdom, as if the "negative press"could be lethal. ¿Am I hearing this correctly)

But then I saw a photograph ...

It's only a photograph.  Yet, running my fingers through the newstream, the infosphere, the daily torrent of blogs and videos, features and twitters — seeing it my heart skipped a beat.  

" Demonstrator helping a wounded riot policeman out of the crowd to safety ... "

News editors across the globe saw it too. And they passed it by.  Another gulp of coffee, another button on a computer, another phonecall, another unverified blip in the 2-hour news-cycle. Yet I'm imprinting this image on the front page of my heart.

This is about more than a news media where "if it bleeds, it leads" is the mantra.  (And "sex sells.")   Yes, this is about how human hearts are mediated one to the other. World to world. Heart to heart.

This image from the turmoil in Iran bespeaks the real news.  For want of which, to paraphase American poet and physician William Carlos Williams, men die miserably every day.

Everyday, we see (ingest , consume) images of crime, violence, war, consuming the toxins such that we are inured to a needless routine of human sorrow.  ¿Might we build up such a defensive system of media antibodies that we can ourselves suffer from an autoimmune disease?

Images of generosity, compassion, peace are so rare.  When they appear in our lives — like the call of birds, the faces of infants, the butterflies of happiness — ¿shall we not nurture them, like seed-savers tending an endangered species? To paraphrase Buddhist journalist Wes "Scoop" Nisker, ¿are not moments such as this, of compassion, like the "opposable thumb of consciousness"?

This heart, as wide as the world, does not recognize the words enemy or foe.  To nurture the heart of self-cherishing is to dwell in the endless night of woe, but to nurture the heart of compassion is to dwell in the plain daylight of great happiness.

♥  may all beings be well  ♥

I N C U N A B U L A

i don't wish to alarm you.  this is just a report of last weekend.

my talk on buddhism & poetry for cherry blossom festival (an ohigan howha) at venice hongwanji buddhist temple went well as did the haiku workshop the next day.  (they'll print some of the haiku in their next newsletter.)  i also attended the ohigan service on sunday, led by a great speaker i'd heard once before here in san francisco. 

 the book launch at beyond baroque for songs for tomorrow by ko un also went well, in an evening shared with amy uyematsu, with whom it was a great honor and delight indeed — as did the haiku workshop at beyond baroque, the next day.  a full and rewarding weekend ... with one glitch.

i'd arrived in l.a. friday the 13th.  the next day, saturday, i was riding on a bike loaned to me by my host, en route to the temple, when this black car going about 15mph out an alley (driven by someone on a sell phone) catapulted me blam! off the bike onto the sidewalk. 

 when i came to, i didn't wait for 911 but got back on my bike and went on to the temple.  i don't think i understood what 911 was at that point ~~~ i just wanted to get out of there (hysterical scene) and go with what i know, in this case, teaching haiku to a bunch of adults and kids.  (aka being on automatic pilot by this point.)

questions?  comments?

the urgent care nurse at kaiser had a ct-scan done yesterday and said it seems normal and my headache and brainfog will clear in 6 weeks.  (i've marked my calendar.)  it's also painful to sit, breathe, etc., but ibuprofen and arnica seem the best, as the medication she'd offer would only make me more dizzy.   the driver gave me her insurance info, so if i need to see an md monday, if pain and woozieness persist, i'll do so; natasha richardson's tragic news keenly comes to mind.

meanwhile, i finished a 2000-word review of the guggenheim exhibition the third mind on influence of buddhism on american art for urthona: buddhism & art.

difficultly (under the circumstances).

but i'm happy with the results.  i'm entitling it

A BRIEF LONG SPIRAL:

Now onto a piece on American Buddhist literature, for BuddhaDharma, and prepping my Practical Buddhism course for Stanford Continuing Studies (third time I've offered it) and sending out ms. of Chinese poetry & song.

By the way, the urgent care questionnaire had a real koan:

'Did you lose consciousness?'

('how long were you unconscious?')

friday the 13th

a fire engine parks in my space

I've just entered my first post, Solstice :: Light In Darkness, to my new blog Where Buddha Meets Freud at Psychology Today.

(Am not changing horses midstream, but will be posting there weekly, so please bookmark the site, and visit as often or as seldom as you wish.)

S e a s o n ' s

g r e e t i n g s

(Show of hands.) How many people have seen Adbusters?

This is that magazine where all the ads look like ads until you stop and look closer and you discover they’re anti-ads ... like those billboards “liberated” by  the Billboard Liberation Front.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen one paid ad in an entire issue … which couldn't be said (for what it's worth) for many a nonprofit magazine.

Anyways, is it apt that such a radical magazine is interested in Buddhism? A friend of mine told me recently that he thinks the FBI has been infiltrating his meditation group.  Why? Because the message there is that of being content with what one is rather than what one has.  (!) How does he know there are FBI agents, though? Because they’re the ones, he says, that keep their eyes open during meditation … looking all around.  So how can we recognize them, I asked.  They look like art students, he said. 

¿These days, who doesn’t look like art students?

Anyways, Adbusters tells me that they’re excerpting an edited selection from my forthcoming third edition of Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buddhism (June 2009, 'tho maybe by then you can trade salmon for it ... or flowers). It will be on the front page, they say, of their website.  (The pay, by the way, is exactly: $0.00.) 

You may see it before I do, as I’m going to go out to have Pho with a friend I haven’t seen for four months (having been figuratively chained to the desk revising the book for June).  At Pho Vang Tau, on Green, just West of Stockton (used to be a Korean place, with great food, cutlery, ambiance; before that it was an Italian cafe where old Italian anarchists had a Fernet at a small round table while young kids shot pool to the latest Italian pop music on the jukebox).

Please tell me what you think.

yesterday, i finished the revision of my complete idiot's guide to buddhism (begun july).  it will hit stands around june, meanwhile, here's a sidebar with fun facts about the brain, of possible interest [the last portion i find particularly so] :

 The human brain takes up 2% of the body's weight yet requires about 25% of its oxygen. The number of states the brain is capable of at any given moment is 1 followed by a million zeros. It contains more cells (neurons) than stars in the Milky Way, and each has app. 1,000 points of interconnection (synapses) with other brain cells, 100 trillion such path-points in all, each firing from 1-100 times/second, simultaneously, and with built-in feedback loops, enabling it to learn from experience and change its structure (neuroplasticity). This adaptive process is dependent on interaction with other brains, from early childhood development on throughout life, thus confirming our inextricable and profound interdependence.